One Night on the Caribbean Queen

A Dark Investigation in 1920's Chicago.

The End of All Things

Where our players discover their actions have brought an end to the world.

Lassiter has three tasks that the investigators must perform to shut the Eye of Yith. The Oracles (three large mirrors on platforms around the room) must be aligned, the Aperture (the hole in the ceiling to another place) must be properly adjusted and the Chant of Closure must be spoken. Lassiter tells them to speak the Chant last as it will attract the Evil Wind. Julius, Inspector Weigand and Rose climb up to the platforms to adjust the oracles and Jehiel Lugo leaps out from behind the large mirror and cuts Rose horribly with a knife. Julius shoots and hits Lugo who is snarling that this find will be his and his alone. The wind swells rapidly after the gunshot. Weigand draws his service revolver and finishes him off, the wind building even more, a strange piping cry heard distantly. Lugo falls to the floor with a loud thump. The blind Lassiter tells them to hurry!

Julius slides the adjustment on the Yaumweh and closes the Aperture down to the correct setting and the rest of the group aligns the Oracles. Martha intones the Chant of Closure (hastily scribbling in some corrections on Lassiter’s pronounciation). The wind is roaring at this point but with a blinding, pure white light the Eye of Yith closes. Refusing to leave the wounded Lassiter behind, the party makes its way back up to the light. Julius, falling behind slightly catches a glimpse of something horrific. A giant, unblinking black eye surrounded by tentacles and a cancerous miasma of flesh. Julius feels the eye upon him. Knowing him.

Scrambling out of the obelisk and back up the rig gunshots break out from the camp. Merrick Helmsley, the master’s student, has apparently gone insane and begun executing the villagers whose hum has descended in tone. Holding Rose back as she attempts to go to the man, Inspector Weigand peppers the man with a shotgun round dropping him soundly. Dr. Miguez, the Honduran doctor in a coma, has awakened with murderous intent and has begun killing as well though he appears to be held in a stupor. Julius, rattled from his experiences under the Earth, unloads his 1911 into the man. Dr. Miguez does not rise again. They find Dr. Jessica Burnham still cataloguing artifacts. She has clearly taken leave of her senses. Professor Summerfield continues having his double vision of himself writing frantically in Yithian.

Quickly harvesting a fresh eyeball from a recently dead village child, Professor Summerfield begins the ritual to bring them back through time. They arrive, somewhat unexpectedly, on the evening of August 20th, 1921. They can see, across the water, the Caribbean Queen still afloat. Remembering a date mentioned in Professor Smith’s Suicide note Julius rushes to the Navy Pier where he meets the enigmatic Albert Walters. He seems genuinely happy to see the group and says it is the last task he must perform before he rests. Julius asks him his task and he replies that he is a shepherd. When queried about the black bird (the Antenna) and why Albert gave it to Julius, Walters responds that it was so Azh’ Ghith, the Yith intelligence split between the three original players, could communicate with its peers, the other Great Masters. The Purple Flame was a device used by the Adherents to erase memory but it was also a device used to assay minds that could be useful to the Yith. It was used on children at the Foundation to recruit them as human calculators for the Yith. The machine was also used on Grace to erase her memories. Azh’ Ghith returned home through the open Aperture in the Antechamber of the Eye in Honduras. The stars burned into the backs of Grace, Julius, Professor Smith and (slightly later) Richard Monteith were marks from a machine the Ignotus was using to detect Yith minds within the people at the Caribbean Queen. The Ignotus discovered (through the time travels of Dominic Channing) that the Reaping was going to happen and they sought to capture one of the newly arrived Yith to extract the secrets of the universe from it. Through the sabotaging of Robert Wiedman, the columns on the boat were inscribed with sigils (written in Yithian) that would trap the Yith once they arrived. Underestimating their power, some Yith escaped, Azh’ Ghith split itself into three pieces and hid in different people to confound the Ignotus and a final intelligence was found in Jane Seymour, the lady who accosted Julius on that fateful night. The Ignotus were going to use this knowledge to allow their dark god, a being called the Reacher, that resides (and burns constantly) under Tremont. With the knowledge they gain they will free the Reacher and the world will end. Albert Walters asks them to prevent this by travelling to Braunschweig, Germany on February 23rd, 1912. They agree and he sends them there. The travel is much less painful.

Arriving in the bitter cold (Walters was nice enough to give them all jackets), they make their way up to the large mansion on the hill. Making their way toward the house, Rose and Julius spot someone moving off in the forest. Rose moves to investigate and the man is Dominic Channing, apparently looped back to watch himself begin a journey he is already upon. He runs off into the forest and disappears. Entering the mansion it is a virtual madhouse. A group of people watch a person convulsing on the floor. There is a large table brimming with drinks that contain various amounts of hallucinogens. A very young Vera Channing is here (currently using her maiden name, Vera Monaghan), convinced that she will marry Dominic (her intuition is correct). She seems much happier in this time then in 1921. They make their way into the Gallery for the maiden voyage of Mr. Channing. In an effort to make a distraction, Professor Summerfield grabs the swirling liquid in a glass phylactery carried by Mr. Channing and begins trying to chant himself through time. He blurs like a painting left out in the rain and disappears. Heavily narcotized, the crowd thinks it’s all part of the show and claps. Martha breaks out the fragment of mirror in which she saw movement way back at the Coffin affair. Using it in conjunction with a large mirror, she sees inhuman eyes peering at her from all the corners of the room. Before she can scream they pull her into the mirror and away…

Julius returns to his .45 and during the multiple distractions fires it into the back of Dominic Channing’s skull. The entire scene blurs and Julius wakes up to a knock at his door. It is Jane Seymour, again asking for a ride into Chicago. He excuses himself to go get dressed. He remembers a strange and terrible dream that he had. Rose is reading from one of her books when a scream from down the street draws her attention to the window. Professor Summerfield is perusing old texts and documenting his thoughts when he hears a scream as well. Martha and Graham are gleefully leaving a lovely dinner when people pointing up at the sky run past them.

Looking up into the sky they see the stars going out in great numbers leaving behind an impenetrable darkness. It is, they all realize, a giant, unblinking eye that signals the death of all mankind. Despite the horror of the event they all survive to perish slowly in the ashes that follow. Summerfield flits through time, writing furiously in his journal (the Codex he recovered) in Yithian telling his past self to not go through time, to not close the Eye of the Yith and to not kill Dominic Channing. He screams as he realizes his hands are not those of a human. Prior to leaving a time the Yith close the eye down for a later time. It is very much like shutting off the lights when you leave a room. And usually when they leave an apocalypse follows their mass migration.

The Yith have organized this series of events to thwart the Ignotus. THEY are the Great Race. THEY are the ones who will determine when the world shall end. THEY reign supreme over all things that crawl, walk and scuttle upon the earth.